Remembering Black Wall Street

One of the most important antidotes to the claims of race pseudo-science (that Black people are, compared to other "races," innately less intelligent and more criminal, and even have a lesser ability to "organize socially" per "biosocial criminologist" John Paul Wright) is acknowledging the systemic racism in the United States that actively hindered the Black struggle to achieve prosperity after slavery.

So I'm very glad to see the NYTimes is focusing on Black Wall Street, which was destroyed by the racial resentment of the white majority in Tulsa Oklahoma 100 years ago this coming weekend. 

And as I've noted, although the Tulsa massacre was probably the most horrific post-Emancipation "race riot," it certainly wasn't the only one.

The message to Black people from the white majority was clear - "don't get too uppity or we will destroy you." 

The lesson that can be learned from this is that systemic racism can be extremely powerful without the law behind it. There was no law passed that said Black people couldn't build prosperous communities: the underlying beliefs of the white majority caused the destruction of Greenwood.

The potential that was destroyed is well expressed in the article:

“What if we had been allowed to maintain our family business?” asked Brenda Nails-Alford, who is in her early 60s. The Greenwood Avenue shoe shop of her grandfather and his brother was destroyed. “If they had been allowed to carry on that legacy,” she said, “there’s no telling where we could be now.” 

Another important aspect of the Tulsa massacre is the fact that it was white-washed out of history. As the NYTimes article notes:

The final insult of the massacre came in the silence. For decades, Tulsa deliberately ignored and covered up what had happened in Greenwood. Many descendants said they learned about the mob and the killings only as adults — and even then, some of the recounting was told in whispers.

People on Twitter attest to their ignorance of the Tulsa massacre.

And as a result of the white-washing, people like Charles Murray, John Paul Wright and Steve Sailer and their media enablers like Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan and Steven Pinker and the IDW-Quillette industrial complex can claim total ignorance of the many ways that Black people tried, like any other "race," to build businesses and create better lives. 

They can deny the legacy of extra-legal systemic racism that thwarted Black people at every turn and that led them into immiseration. 

The victims of systemic racism are then blamed for their oppression by claims from "biosocial criminologists" and other race mongers that Black people's communities are poor because there is something inferior about Black genetics.

The racist Right is not going to sit back while the history of Black oppression is finally being fully acknowledged though. I've noted the hostility of the IDW & friends to the 1619 Project - and their antagonism is getting results.

The news outlet NC Policy Watch reported on Monday that the university’s dean, chancellor, and faculty had backed Hannah-Jones’s appointment to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a tenured professorship, after a “rigorous tenure process at UNC.” But in an extraordinary move, the board of trustees declined to act on that recommendation. Hannah-Jones was instead offered a five-year, nontenured appointment following public and private pressure from conservatives. Notably, other Knight Chairs at the journalism school have been tenured on its professional track, which acknowledges “significant professional experience” rather than traditional academic scholarship. Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer and MacArthur genius grant surely qualify.